Mrs. Myrtle was a lovely young woman, lovely in mind and body, but
for one defect--viz., a want of firmness and self-esteem. She was
surrounded by all the comforts and elegancies that wealth could
procure, and was yet the abject slave of a gentlemanly tyrant. She
could not receive or pay visits, go shopping, or to a _matinée_ without
first obtaining permission from her master. And she was always giving
an account of herself in a pacificatory manner. When she suffered
humiliation, she blamed her husband, and not the standard she had
given him. Mrs. M. had three boys, and they were the most inveterate
liars. How could it be otherwise, when their mother spent half her
time in eluding inspection, and half in making confession, while she
regularly searched Mr. M.’s pockets for coins that could be spent
without explaining “what for.”
* * * * *
I could draw another picture where the husband, as soon as his means
permitted, placed money in the bank in his wife’s name, that she might
feel the interest was more really hers to spend as she pleased without
any sense of obligation.